This past year was a tumultuous one, to say the least. Full of doubt and uncertainty, at times turning to despair. Everything turned out well for the Cardinals, here’s hoping things turn out well in all the other difficult matters that confronted us.

Tomorrow being the first day of January, we can sleep well bundled up in the warmth that comes from knowing that pitchers and catchers report a mere month-and-a-half away. Mo Boiler continues his lone attempt to revive The Birdwatch with a 2006 review in pictures. It takes only photographs of a well-tended ballfield to fill me with joy.

Until the gloves start popping in Spring Training, there’s plenty of action in the realms of NCAA Basketball, the Bowl Games, the NFL Playoffs, and the NHL to keep us enthralled. The Blues’ recent resurgence (ailinon, too late) is something to watch. Firing Coach Q was a foolishly unnecessary move. Glad to see Andy Murray giving the team some direction, finally. He strikes me as the ideal sort of coach for a young team and there’s no denying the results so far.

Be safe tonight. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t attempt on a bicycle.

There’s a 2007 Predictions thread in the sidebar at VeB. Here’s my “contribution” with some added commentary:

T.J. Nall makes the gNats opening day roster and is their best setup man by the all-star break.

(He toiled away in the Dodgers farm system and left as a minor-league free agent, being swept up in the Great Gnats Minor-League Free Agent Dragnet of 2006. He’s so far failed to adjust to AAA level batters. The dude dominated AA last season, striking out 155 batters against 30 walks and just 10 home runs. He’s a groundball machine who gets the strikeouts. The difference between AA hitting and AAA hitting isn’t so great that you’d expect him to struggle so badly in AAA. I could easily see him fixing whatever problem he’s got in Spring Training with an organization that’ll take him seriously and making the big jump. I would be unsurprised if he made the gNats roster as a swingman and earned higher leverage bullpen roles as the season goes on. After seeing his MLE’s, I’d hope the Cards would sign him to a minor-league deal.)

Brian Lawrence signs a split contract with the Rockies and has an exceptional spring, joining a rotation of Cook/Francis/Hirsh/Fogg. He contends with Kip Wells and Mark Mulder for the 2007 NL Comeback Player of the Year award, but loses to Mike Hampton. (Gagne wins it in the AL.)

I discussed Brian Lawrence here a while back.

Taylor Buchholz struggles with home runs and with finding a role in Colorado and, after he fails to clear waivers, is traded to the Cardinals, when we suddenly find ourselves with three of the game’s better curveballers in our rotation.

You can see video of him striking out 8 batters in a game at his MLB.com page. His curveball really is a beauty. He’s been sporadically home-run prone throughout his professional career. It remains to be seen whether the move to Colorado increases that tendency. Coors field, strangely enough, had a lower HR factor by .004 compared to Minute Maid

We at VeB argue over who should lose their rotation spot during Mark Mulder’s (stunning) minor league rehabilitation period.

Chris Narveson is claimed off waivers by the Nationals at the end of Spring Training. He wins a rotation spot and puts together a solid season for a fifth starter. We at VeB argue frequently over whether he would have had the same success in NL Central parks compared to NL East parks like Shea and RFK.

I’m sure he won’t clear waivers and every team in the league could use a Darren Oliver type of lefty longman in the ‘pen. Including the Cardinals, but he won’t stay here unless a trade happens to move off one of the three lefties ahead of him on the depth chart. (Rincon, TJ, Flores).

Online ad revenues increase to the point where Jeff Sackmann, lboros, Al Yellon, and a few others break away from SBNation, form their own LLC, and negotiate extensive access rights to interview players and personnel with their respective baseball teams.

I’m bitter about certain people shoveling truckloads of cash into the bank while paying the people doing the actual creative and research work what I presume to be a pittance. Sackmann and Yellon have the technical expertise to code up the thing, I’m sure. It’s none of my business, of course, what these folks do and how much they’re paid for it. At least I’d love to see the sidebar posts called something other than “Diaries,” a word that has no place on a forum for discussing baseball.

Update: Jeff linked to this post, describing it as “inscrutable.” I’m satisfied that my comments in this post convey my mild embarassment in making the prediction. To disambiguate unambiguously, the prediction was intended as a compliment of Jeff’s writing and web-app development abilities, that he could make money in this racket if he felt like it. I skirted the boundary of baseball and politics in writing that comment—I’ll leave it at that. For what it’s worth, lboros isn’t going anywhere.

Jason Marquis is DFA’d after giving up over 2 HR/9 in Wrigley and after Mark Prior dominates during his minor league rehabilitation. He signs with the Mets to fill the hole left by Pedro Martinez’ unpromising recovery from surgery and puts together a fairly decent season.

Time for Illinois vs. Xavier. It would appear we’re off to a bad start…

Update: One more prediction… (I’m going to keep them all in this post so I can grade myself after the 2007 season is complete.) Larry Bigbie will revive his career with an exceptional offensive season. I figure he’ll join the Minnesota Twins or possibly the Marlins, both teams who need help in the outfield. I liked what little I saw of his defense last season and like his swing and line-drive potential. He’d likely do better for the Marlins as a centerfielder, but the Twins could use him in left.

Some funny Christmas themed videos at the soon-to-be-wed Alex Fritz’s F.Y.C. here.

He’s also responsible for the funniest Cardinals-related post of 2006, here.

My old friend Pete’s brother, Xristos, had a very special Xristmas present.

The perils of back n’ forth translation: that space opera about the Presbyterian Church. One of these are sure to amuse you, too. Classic stuff (a year old).

This made me laugh, too. A YTMND made from my favorite comedy, all time.

“You live in the ocean ‘cuz you ain’t got no job!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

If you’ve got 20 minutes to kill—you know you do—you can watch Jim Gaffigan’s old routine here.

Seen while doing some typically last-second Christmas shopping (just getting started, really): the Pee-Pee Tee-Pee. I can’t imagine that would work too well.

I could see it working more like the old clown head with hat toy lawn sprinkler…

The Brewers signed Aussie RHSP Chris Oxspring to a minor league contract with a non-roster invitation to Spring Training. After pitching well in the Padres’ minor league system and making his MLB debut as a September call-up in 2005, he spent 2006 in the Japanese leagues, presumably to be closer to his family. His 2006 line for the Hanshin Tigers was inferior to Gissell’s with Seibu, for what it’s worth…

Oxspring: 4-3 – 5.12ERA – 16 G – 15GS – 0 CG – 77.1 IP – 78 H – 45 R – 44 ER – 8 HR
             51K:23BB (2.22) – .265BAA – 5.94 K/9 – 1.31 WHIP

Gissell: 6-4 – 3.96 ERA – 18 G – 18 GS – 2 CG – 109.0 IP – 112 H – 53 R – 48 ER – 10 HR
          85K:30BB (2.83) – .264BAA – 7.02 K/9 – 1.303 WHIP

Just sayin’, ‘zall.

I recently bought “The Book” by Tom Tango, a.k.a. Tangotiger; Mitchel Lichtman, formerly a consultant for my beloved Cardinals; and Andy Dolphin, an astronomer and master of the statistical modeling of sports. With the end of the semester, I’ve only had a chance to read the first chapter, but it’s great stuff. The book’s name comes from the response a manager might give to a strategic question by a reporter, “That’s what the book says to do in that situation.” It’s a book of baseball strategy, drawing on databases of what has been tried successfully in the game’s history. The book’s (or “The Book’s”) website also has a blog that I was reading through earlier today. Through there, I found the Pro-Football Reference ‘site and was mighty impressed with what’s there—especially the three articles linked by Tangotiger, one on using Poisson distributions for estimating how many 1-, 2-, and 3-touchdown games an 8-TD/season true-talent wide receiver will have in an average year; and two on using a maximum-likelihood estimation model to rank college football teams—one of the BCS metrics uses a tweaked MLE model. For a homework assignment a week or so ago, I used MLE to assign probabilities in a bigram model of the language underlying the text, Green Eggs and Ham. If you’re interested, the word “I” is followed by the word “say” 1.449% of the time you see “I”.

The Lake Elsinore Storm (Padres A+ affiliate) may have the most frightening uniform design ever seen. Check out the cap!

The Cardinals have Matt Hirsh signed to a minor league contract. There’s an informative interview with him here. He’s the younger brother of Jason Hirsh, who was foolishly traded from the ‘Stros to the Rockies. He’s also a pretty bright dude. He’s got a website to showcase his graphic/web design work and also maintains another website about he and his brother.

Back to work…

I like the Mercury commercials that play during sporting events for the babe, of course. Every time the commercial comes on, I wonder what the hell the goofy song playing in the background is. I haven’t followed pop music since the grunge movement was in full swing. In short, I used to be with it, but then they changed what “it” was. Now, what I’m with isn’t it, and what’s “it” seems weird and scary to me. But I hang out with people who are hip with “it” and learned last night that the goofy song is called “Nth Degree” by a band called Morningwood. If you’d like to hear the song and see some real, live goofballs lip-sync it: click click. I’m pretty sure the part of the song that plays in the commercials is when the singer is spelling the band’s name.

I’d be interested to know of the Ford execs reaction when they find out that their first non-truck advertising campaign in decades relies on a boner joke.

One more Chris “The Missile” Gissell note: his lone major league start came against my beloved Cardinals. He lasted four innings, over which he collected 8 strikeouts to no walks. He did give up five runs, but three of those R’s were BI’ed by Albert Pujols at Coors field so you can’t blame the guy. He struck out Larry Walker twice and Jimmy Ballgame thrice. I’d like to see the guy get another shot at the majors. I’d be pleased if it came with the Cardinals. Too bad that nickname doesn’t work as good as it looks on paper… I think he pronounces his name to rhyme with “gazelle.”

Speaking of Albert Pujols at Coors Field, check out DanUp’s post concerning a cool new feature at Baseball Reference.

Derrick Goold passes on some good-sounding news regarding Mark Mulder. It’s not a popular idea after his struggles last season and general decline since the 2004 ASB, but I’d love to see him come back for a couple of seasons. It would not surprise me a bit if he and Tim Hudson both managed to get their game back in 2007. I’m also convinced that Mike Hampton will have a big season—the Atlanta Braves figure to be a surprisingly good team next year. Their pitching should be greatly improved in all aspects.

Since I posted a link to the Internet’s Armpit in this post (myspace.com, but it’s worth it… Jill Wagner’s a doll, man… She’s top-three on my list of pretty women I like to see on television along with Robin Meade. Those women are almost as pretty as I am ruggedly handsome.), I’d be remiss not to link to Nick Vatterott’s page. Funny, funny man. I should go visit sometime during this break.

There was an event at Anheuser-Busch today, where the full line of 2006 World Series Champion Budweiser bottles were unveiled and a few Cardinals made appearances. My dad’s been a Mets’ fan since, I imagine, their first game.

Which was April 11th, 1962 against the Cardinals. Stan Musial and Kenny Boyer both doubled. Curt Flood swiped two bags. Larry Jackson pitched his first of 11 complete games. My beloved Cardinals won 11-4.

Pop works at A-B and went to the gig. Thanks to him, now I’ve got the first autographs that I’ve ever had: Jason Isringhausen’s, Brad Thompson’s, and Josh Hancock’s. I’m irrationally happy about that for a fella my age.

Full disclosure: I kept a complimentary note that Cedric Boeckx had written me with his signature on it during Fall of 2001. He’s something like the Johan Santana of Linguistics. Accomplished more by the age of 25 than the many do in their entire careers. He’s ahead of his time, heads and shoulders above all the rest, yada yada yada… One of the nice treats of studying at the U of I is that my department routinely brings in exceptional visiting professors. I got to work with one during this semester now coming to a close.

Sorry for the lame title. I get a good Black Oak Arkansas song in my head every once in a while.

I’m not a fan of the Post-Dispatch sports forums. It’s a pain in the ass to have to periodically wade in there to find the handy nuggets left by people with access and actual information about up-to-the-second goings on. So I made a the Bernie Button, linked in the sidebar as “Bernie’s Pressblog” to take me to a page filtered with just the stuff I want and formatted so I can see everything that was written.

It turns out that Derrick Goold sometimes posts stuff to CardsTalk instead of to BirdLand for whatever reason, necessitating a Derrick Button.

It won’t be as useful as the Bernie button, since Goold doesn’t rely on CardsTalk to communicate with the fine people of Cardinal Nation the way Bernie uses the Pressbox. For that reason, I won’t put the button in the sidebar. I expect it won’t be hard to dig up later… Just have to search for “Derrick Goold” and “Black Oak Arkansas.” The two are unlikely to come up again together on the same page, eh?

Compare and contrast:

4.38 ERA – 181.0 IP – 29 GS – 133:53 (2.51) K:BB – 25 HR – 6.61 K/9
4.33 ERA – 135.0 IP – 23 GS – 111:38 (2.92) K:BB – 21 HR – 7.40 K/9

The first line is Adam Wainwright’s 2005 adjusted line according to Dan Szymborski’s MLE spreadsheet from that season. The second one belongs to his teammate, Chris Gissell. Gissell was drafted out of high school by the Cubs and left the organization as a minor league free agent after the 2002 season. He spent the next two years with the Rockies AAA affiliate, finally getting a brief and unsuccessful taste of the bigs late in 2004. He spent the 2005 season with the Cardinals’ AAA affiliate. Our rotation that year was ridiculously durable and he was never needed on the major league roster. He pitched very well at the AAA level for the third straight season.

After the 2005 season, he left the US to pitch for the Seibu Lions—Daisuke Matsuzaka’s team. His (incomplete) 2006 line with Seibu is here and here:

6-4 – 18 GS – 2 CG – 109.0 IP – 3.96 ERA – 85:30 (2.83) K:BB – 10 HR – 7.02 K/9

I can’t find out why he pitched in so few games—I reason he didn’t seriously injure himself since he pitched two effective innings in relief of rookie Hironori Matsunaga in the Lions’ second game of the playoffs.

Gissell made the equivalent of $427,670 with Seibu last season. He’s available and would probably be eager to get a shot at the Cardinals again, now that we’ve got some rotation spots to fill. We could do a whole lot worse for a whole lot more.

PECOTA projected him for a 4.57 ERA over 109 IP with 72K:34BB in 2006. Pretty damned accurate projection of his actual performance in the Pacific League. Along with the PECOTA line, Baseball Prospectus 2006 includes this comment on Gissell:

Gissell’s not going to be a star, but he’s pitched well in some tough parks. He throws strikes, works quickly, fields his position well, and threw 200-plus innings with a 3-1 strikeout-walk ratio in Colorado Springs. Rather than continue taking million dollar chances on the likes of Jose Lima [or $6,000,000 for Joel Pineiro — adds Liam], a club should give Gissell the ball 15 times and see what happens. Sure, he posted an ERA north of 14.00 with the Rockies in a brief stint, but who hasn’t? That’s like criticizing a Kennedy for being found with alcohol and a dead hooker.

I’ll end this note with two things Gissell… First, lboros of VeB conducted an interview with Memphis pitching coach Dyar Miller in 2005 in which Gissell came up:

VEB: Tell me a little bit about Chris Gissell. I know he’s having a great year—it seems as if he’s right up there with Reyes and Wainwright in terms of how his numbers look—but he’s older, been in a few organizations. What kind of pitcher is he? I don’t know much about him at all.

MILLER: Well, he was a high school draft, I think by the Cubs. This is his 9th year, I think. And he’s still relatively young—26, 27. He’s a fastball, slider, curve, changeup guy. You know, he really pitches like I like to teach—pitches off his fastball. He locates his fastball, moves it up and down, in and away. He could pitch a whole game just with his fastball, he’s so good with that. In fact, I’m trying to get him to use more breaking stuff. He pitched last night—struck out nine guys in six innings. I think he had a two-hitter or a three-hitter going in six, and then Pickering hit a two-run homer off him. So he gave up three runs in six innings and he got the win last night for us.

What’s not to like?

Secondly—and I found this really funny—Chris Gissell’s Hudson’s Bay High School Class of ’96 reunion committee was having a hard time tracking him down. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to get to his 10-year reunion since he was pitching on the same staff as Daisuke frickin’ Matsuzaka.

A joke I told earlier today about how to pull a unbeatable prank on a friend led me to find a safety video on the temperature and pressure valve fortunately installed on every water heater tank you might find in your house or apartment. It makes the joke a whole lot better.

It’s finals week and here I am, searching YouTube for explosions. Nobody should be surprised.

At least I’m not playing the classic Snow Fight 3D, though. Wasn’t until I pulled out that link, for sure.

At long last, I’ve found a free agent starting pitcher that I’m somewhat excited about. Only somewhat, though, since he may never pitch again.

The pitcher is RHP Brian Lawrence, who was drafted by the Padres and showed uncanny consistency while advancing through the minors. He was brought up to the Padres midway through 2001 and was a reliably good 200-inning starter for the next four years. In 2005, he struggled and was traded to the Nationals for Vinny Castilla after the season. In Spring Training, the gNats checked his shoulder out and discovered a tear in his labrum. When the surgeons opened his shoulder up, they found rotator cuff damage as well. He sat out all of last season and was released by Washington after their season ended, so he is now a free-agent—even though he doesn’t show up on any free agent lists. The latest information from him I can find is that he plans to be ready to pitch come Spring Training, though.

I dug up some old scouting reports on him. This one makes him sound like someone who could benefit from Dave Duncan—he’s smart and versatile. His FoxSports page lists his repertoire: cutter-sinker-slider-change. Showing some faith in Lawrence would definitely be a worthwhile risk, I’d say. Chris Carpenter would have a lot of good advice to offer a pitcher finding a second lease on his career.

Tears to the rotator cuff are scary injuries.

Did you know that the fellow who sings in the Real Men of Genius commercials is the same guy who sang ‘Eye of the Tiger’ for the Rocky III soundtrack? I didn’t.

The Cardinals signed Russ Springer tonight for $1,750,000. That’s a good deal. I’d been thinking Rudy Seanez for a bit less would be a smart move—adding another veteran K-machine to the bullpen. Springer’s prone to the long-ball, but he’s not susceptible to left-handers and has a very good K:BB.

Derrick Goold put together a preliminary list of players who may be non-tendered next Tuesday. One that he likes is Joel Pineiro, whose closest comparable player is (gulp) Jason Marquis. Number 2 on that list is Jake Westbrook, though. Since the 2003 season, Pineiro’s numbers have gone rapidly in the wrong direction—all of his numbers except the G:F that Goold notices and he did manage to bring down his HR rate last year. Jeff at Lookout Landing is being coy about it, but seems to have a theory on Pineiro’s unexpected decline. I don’t expect he’d be a safe bet to improve the Cardinals next season. Speaking of Marquis, there are rumors floating around that he’s about to sign with the Cubs—I’ve heard for 3yrs/$27mil. That would be an insane contract, surely Hendry’s not that desperate. One year at $3mil sounds more likely.

One of the players taken by the Cardinals is worth getting a little bit excited about: Omar Falcon. He’s a switch-hitting catcher with a super cool name and who put up OPS’s over .800 the past two seasons. He’ll be replacing Michel Hernandez and Mike Rose at Memphis. It’ll be interesting to see whether he can adjust to the jump from advanced A-ball to AAA. The jump from A+ to AA is usually considered the hardest one to make. But heck, his 2006 MLE line of .207/.310/.357 is better than Bennett’s .223/.274/.331 actual line. Nice to have a switch-hitting catcher back in the upper levels of the system.

The Rule 5 Draft will occur tomorrow morning, when major league team’s can snatch a player who is both eligible (in their fifth pro season after being drafted out of high school or in their fourth season if drafted out of college) and unprotected (by being placed on the 40-man roster). The Cardinals don’t have any needs that could be filled via Rule 5. At the bottom of this article, Matthew Leach reports on a club official saying that the Cards have no plans to draft any players, at least in the major league portion. (There’s a minor league component to the Rule 5 Draft, but the players who are exchanged by that route are those deemed non-prospects by their teams—primarily a way to fill holes in minor league rosters). With the rules being changed under the new CBA this year to extend eligibility by a year over the old deal, it’s likely that fewer players will be taken in the draft.

Messing around with tables of Minor League Equivalent figures earlier in the offseason, I thought Callix Crabbe might be an interesting choice to split time with Aaron Miles. He’s a speedy, switch hitting second baseman with unusually good BB:K numbers. Obviously, the Cardinals don’t need him after signing Adam Kennedy to a below-market 3-year contract. I looked around to see which teams Crabbe might fit in with. The best two I saw were the Pirates, who could use another left-handed bat, backing up the inept Jose Castillo; and Texas, to back up Ian Kinsler and provide some speed.

Update: Hardball Times liveblogged the draft. Nobody took Calle, or any 2B for that matter. The Cardinals filled some holes in the minor league portion, taking a shortstop with a great baseball name and a catcher. The Reds cornered the market on minor leaguers with my last name. One of them’s from California and the other from Georgia, so my guess is they’re unrelated. The Cards didn’t lose anyone in the draft, either—no big surprise there. The Phillies took three players, including two catchers. That’s an interesting strategy, I guess. Let the two battle it out for the right to back-up… Chris Coste?

I’d linked to this Braves mailbag a while back (calling the Braves beatwriter ‘astute’) in which he answers a question about offseason moves. His top two priorities were dealing away Marcus Giles and Horacio Ramirez contracts for, ideally, a leadoff hitter to free payroll to rebuild the bullpen and make a run at Glavine. The Braves managed to unload Ramirez today for a downright spectacular setup man to get games to Bob Wickman in Rafael Soriano. That’s phenomenally stupid of the Mariners. Dan Szymborski gives the ZiPS projections for the two players exchanging teams along with some exasperated commentary. This poll sums up the view from Mariner fans. The Braves are going to have a surprisingly good team next year. I’m looking forward to seeing Mike Hampton and Tim Hudson return to greatness. I may be unhappy to see it in person during a late weekend in August when I’ll head to St. Louis with some friends from Atlanta for a weekend reprisal of our Cards vs. Braves trip from last summer.

The funniest thing is that I saw news of that trade after reading of this three-way deal that would have netted the Braves Rafael Soriano and Armando Benitez for Tim Hudson. To say the least, the Braves did quite a bit better with this trade.

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I wrote a simple script today to poop out a webpage with the first 10,000 html character entities. It’s amazing the kind of crap they have in there. Forgive my ignorance, but what are these things supposed to be: Ѽ ѽ Ѿ? Or these: ҈ ҉? I see all of the IPA Characters are in there. An interesting project might be to write a plug-in for Firefox that adds a ‘type in IPA’ context menu option when you right-click in a text form on a webpage. It would pop-up a little keyboard widget so you could type (by clicking) IPA characters into the form using unicode. That’d be pretty damned cool, I’d think.

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I’ve been sick with something nasty since leaving St. Louis after Thanksgiving, but I think I’ve finally beat it—feeling a lot better today. That should mean more of these super-interesting posts, although the semester is coming to a close and that’ll be keeping me busy, to put it mildly.

The Cardinals signed ace Chris Carpenter to a three-year extension today with an option for 2012. What we know is that he’ll be paid $7mil in 2007 and $9mil in 2008. The contract is worth $65 million and the option pushes it to $77mil. That sounds to me like a steal, so long as Carpenter doesn’t seriously injure himself—he’ll be 38 in 2012, so it would appear that Carp will be a Cardinal for the rest of his career. That pleases me.

Allow me to speculate on the yearly salaries. At first glance, the 2012 option year looks like it’s for only $12 million dollars. Using Dave Studeman’s figure of an 8% inflation rate for player salaries over the past decade or so, that seems like an incredibly reasonable salary for a pitcher of Carpenter’s caliber in a market where Gil Meche may very well earn that much two years into his contract.

John VB at VeB sagely points out that there’s almost certainly a buyout involved. For comparison, Edmonds’ contract had a buyout of his 2007 $10mil salary of $3 million and Pujols has a $5mil buyout of his 2012 option year. (May it not be exercised.) While admitting the exercise is rather silly since we’ll find out the details within a week or so, John assumes a $4 million buyout on Carp’s 2012 option year to come up with this breakdown:

07 $7mil 08 $9mil 09 $14mil 10 $15mil 11 $16mil 12 $16mil

That sounds right to me. If you bump the buyout up to $5mil, the 2011 salary drops to $15mil and the option year goes up to $17mil. The only conceivable way the numbers would work out to be anything substantially dissimilar to what John guessed is if there’s an enormous option year with an equally huge buyout—that wouldn’t make much sense. Furthermore, since this contract takes Carpenter through his career, I’m imagining there’s deferred money built in, much like Jim Edmonds’ extension that pays him $300,000 a year from 2010-2019 as a right fancy pension.

Update: Holy smokes… Joe Strauss’ article has been updated to include the yearly breakdown:

The Cardinals did not announce terms of the deal but it was learned Tuesday morning that it will pay Carpenter $14 million in 2009, $14.5 million in 2010 and $15 million in 2011. The extension also includes a $15 million club option for 2012, or the Cardinals may exercise a $1 million buyout.

Should the Cardinals assume the option for 2012, Carpenter will receive $77.5 million during the term of the deal.
Provisions also call for $2 million to be deferred without interest from each of the last three guaranteed years.

The deferred money there is freaking enormous… It makes the contract look like this:

07 $8.5mil 08 $10.5mil 09 $12mil 10 $12.5mil 11 $13mil 12 $15mil

That’s some tasty hometown discount.